3.15 inch OneHalf and the tale of long-tailed !ant¡-Virus distribution
Many years ago, after I got bitten by OneHalf, I've developed some kind of backup procedure. It wasn't perfect at the time, but it was working and got better over several years. I don't consume antivirus, and I disable Defender through GPEDIT.MSC and regedit.exe. They're useless.
PROCEDURE BEGIN to the END;
On a monthly schedule, two incremental backups on two separated external HDDs, with half of month offset between the two. Also every fortnight, I send an AES-ed copy of most important files to the server-farm aka cloud -- "cloud" is a buzzword, and I won't use that term!
Laptop-As-A-Destop (LAAD)
I use password manager. I don't save password on browsers, esp. if it's Mozilla. Some of my data are shared between Windows, FreeBSD through one little 32 GB FAT32LBA/MBR partition on my LAAD -- I don't believe in GPT/UEFI either! Some of them are: project files, httpd www/data, SSL certs, and few other files, e.g. password DB.
FAT#@
Few weeks ago, We had a blackout. I was in the middle of a Windows session. Many files were open. I love blackouts, my bunker doesn't have windows and it gives me pitch-black. After few hours, things turned back to boring normal. I turned on the computer (battery didn't work), and CHKDSK checked my FAT32. I didn't check the result. I moved on. Few days later, I ran my scheduled backup, and two weeks after that another one. And of course one copy to the server-farm.
Trash
FreeBSD Forums is doing this and I hate it for it! Every 60 days or so, they want me to re-identify myself again. For what purpose? Who knows! Admins hate me.
Onward; To re-authenticate myself to the FreeBSD Forums, I opened-up my password manager. Err Error..., no DB found! I checked the folder. There was no DB file. I checked HDD1 and then HDD2. Nothing over there either. I felt the same thing. The OneHalf nightmare! I checked the online backup too. Well, another nill.
CHKDSK
DB was corrupted when the power went out. The DB file was removed by CHKDSK, and I was backing up an empty folder for weeks.
^(SHIFT)Z
Luckily, I didn't empty the online trash folder, and their was an old copy of DB file. It was one month old though, and lots of changes has happened since last month. I had to spend a full day to recover all changed passwords.
INT13h
I was lucky, and I have to say FreeBSD Forums irritating policy of re-authentication saved me. If it didn't force me to re-authenticate myself, I would have emptied the trash too, hence KMS!
Thanks FreeBSD Forums admins,
... and that's the story.
Many years ago, after I got bitten by OneHalf, I've developed some kind of backup procedure. It wasn't perfect at the time, but it was working and got better over several years. I don't consume antivirus, and I disable Defender through GPEDIT.MSC and regedit.exe. They're useless.
PROCEDURE BEGIN to the END;
On a monthly schedule, two incremental backups on two separated external HDDs, with half of month offset between the two. Also every fortnight, I send an AES-ed copy of most important files to the server-farm aka cloud -- "cloud" is a buzzword, and I won't use that term!
Laptop-As-A-Destop (LAAD)
I use password manager. I don't save password on browsers, esp. if it's Mozilla. Some of my data are shared between Windows, FreeBSD through one little 32 GB FAT32LBA/MBR partition on my LAAD -- I don't believe in GPT/UEFI either! Some of them are: project files, httpd www/data, SSL certs, and few other files, e.g. password DB.
FAT#@
Few weeks ago, We had a blackout. I was in the middle of a Windows session. Many files were open. I love blackouts, my bunker doesn't have windows and it gives me pitch-black. After few hours, things turned back to boring normal. I turned on the computer (battery didn't work), and CHKDSK checked my FAT32. I didn't check the result. I moved on. Few days later, I ran my scheduled backup, and two weeks after that another one. And of course one copy to the server-farm.
Trash
FreeBSD Forums is doing this and I hate it for it! Every 60 days or so, they want me to re-identify myself again. For what purpose? Who knows! Admins hate me.
Onward; To re-authenticate myself to the FreeBSD Forums, I opened-up my password manager. Err Error..., no DB found! I checked the folder. There was no DB file. I checked HDD1 and then HDD2. Nothing over there either. I felt the same thing. The OneHalf nightmare! I checked the online backup too. Well, another nill.
CHKDSK
DB was corrupted when the power went out. The DB file was removed by CHKDSK, and I was backing up an empty folder for weeks.
^(SHIFT)Z
Luckily, I didn't empty the online trash folder, and their was an old copy of DB file. It was one month old though, and lots of changes has happened since last month. I had to spend a full day to recover all changed passwords.
INT13h
I was lucky, and I have to say FreeBSD Forums irritating policy of re-authentication saved me. If it didn't force me to re-authenticate myself, I would have emptied the trash too, hence KMS!
Thanks FreeBSD Forums admins,
... and that's the story.
